


Wide Awake

by taylor_tut



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Exhaustion, Gen, Insomnia, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Parasites, Sick Character, Sick Lance (Voltron), Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-02-03 12:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12748200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: From an anon request on my tumblr: Lance catches a bug that keeps him awake. When he's not allowed to train during the day with everyone else, he tries to do it alone at night. It goes about as well as you'd think.





	Wide Awake

Keith couldn’t focus on Allura’s lecture. All he could think about was the tap tap tapping of Lance’s foot on the ground. His leg was bobbing up and down, and the frantic rhythm was making him begin to feel nervous. 

“Keith!” Allura snapped, clearly not for the first time, “are you listening?”

Keith glared. “I’m trying, but  _someone_  keeps tapping his foot.” Lance, to his credit, looked sheepish and put his hand on his own knee to stop the tapping. However, that only succeeded in causing the fingers on his free hand to drum on the table rapidly. The gauntlet of his armor created a metallic clicking that was somehow even worse than the tapping. 

“Give him a break,” Pidge defended, “he’s had like 10 cups of coffee today.” 

It was true. Ever since Lance had stopped sleeping, he’d been acting unpredictably. 

The first day, he’d hidden it unsettlingly well. “I’m used to it,” had been a mantra, and “it’s not my first sleepless night; it’s all good,” was repeated to anyone who asked him about why he was sitting on the couch playing video games when everyone else woke up and he’d confessed that he hadn’t been able to fall asleep.

Day two was a little rougher. Lance had struggled to focus and his movements were sluggish during training, where Shiro pushed him even harder than he normally would in an attempt to tire him out enough to get some sleep that night.

It hadn’t worked. Day three had brought cranky snapping and subsequent all-consuming guilt. Lance was all over the place emotionally, and Coran had finally decided it was time for a trip to the med bay for a scan. That was when they found the parasite. 

“How much longer until Coran finds a way to get that thing out of his brain?” Hunk fretted. He hated seeing Lance just roll over on Keith’s accusation without even putting up a fight, and hated even more watching him massage his eyes with his palms from the obvious headache throbbing there.

“That depends,” Allura said, her tone softening. “He’s trying everything he can find literature on, but a lot of Altean medicine isn’t suitable for human biology. We just have to be patient.” 

Lance offered a wan smile to Hunk. “I’m doing okay, buddy,” he promised unconvincingly. His voice was rough–four days of being awake didn’t give his body much time to recover from any damage, and it hadn’t come back from training the previous morning. 

“You sound miserable,” Shiro worried. “Are you sure that this bug doesn’t have any symptoms aside from the sleeping thing?” 

Lance shrugged. “I mean, I feel awful, but wouldn’t you?”

Keith looked at the ground, feeling guilty for snapping. He’d gotten all flustered over something so trivial when Lance was the one dealing with the real problem.

“Maybe you should go lie down,” he suggested more lightly, trying to make up for it. “I can–bring you tea or something.” 

“Nah,” Lance shrugged, “I’m gonna train with the rest of you.”

Allura frowned. “Lance, I’m not sure that’s such a great idea.” 

“If I can’t sleep, I might as well be useful, right?” he reasoned, but the logic was four-days-waking-haze-sound, and didn’t really convince the others. 

“I’m sorry, Lance, but we can’t risk you getting injured right now. You’re in too bad a state as it is, and your body won’t heal if it can’t sleep.”

Lance huffed. “Injury is always a risk,” he fought, “but we deal with it because we’re,” he paused to cough, his voice rough and catching in his throat, “we’re defenders of the universe. Just toss me in a pod if I get hurt.” 

“We can’t do that,” Allura stood firm. “You’re not training today, and I’m afraid that’s my final say on the subject.” 

Lance stood in an emotional limbo, where no one, not even himself, was sure whether he was about to cry or yell or both. Instead, he settled for storming off,and though Allura understood that he was just tired, it still hurt.

“It’s okay, princess,” Shiro promised, “don’t take it personally. He’s not himself.” Allura nodded and ushered the others off for training before calling down to check Coran’s progress on the treatment.

* * *

 

Keith woke up in the middle of the night to a loud crash. He bolted up from his bed, bayard in hand, and crept silently to the door, rounding the corner of the hallway toward the sound. 

Standing with his back against the wall, he paused for only a moment listening to the banging noises before leaping out, ready to attack.

What he found stopped him in his tracks.

Lance was on the floor, a bot hovering over him, ready to kick and clearly having done it a few times already, based on the scuffs in Lance’s armor. His helmet was off, looking like it had been knocked across the floor, and he had one arm up in a defensive position. 

“End training sequence!” Keith shouted, rushing to Lance’s side. He opened his eyes, surprised. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t–,” Lance coughed, his voice so shot that he couldn’t speak properly– _probably why he couldn’t turn off the bots_ , Keith thought–”allowed to–,” another cough cut him off.

“You weren’t allowed to train today so you tried to do it in the middle of the night, alone?” 

Lance glared daggers at the floor. “Well, it sounds stupid when you say it like that,” he whispered.

“That’s because it  _was_  stupid,” Keith scolded. But Lance looked exhausted and close to tears, so he dropped the subject for now. “Are you hurt?” 

Surveying himself, he shook his head, but when Keith gave him a scrutinizing look, he sighed and pointed to his ankle. Once he’d stripped away the armor there, he poked it, earning a squeaky yelp from Lance. 

“I think it’s a sprain,” Keith admitted.

“Do we have to tell the others?”

Keith frowned. “I think they’re going to notice when you can’t put pressure on one of your feet.”

“Shiro’s gonna be mad…”

“He won’t be mad at you,” Keith reassured, “but he’ll  _kill_  me if I know you’re hurt and don’t get you to the med bay. Come on.” He hauled Lance up with a grunt, watching him out of the corner of his eyes as he winced and nearly collapsed again. “You good?”

Lance nodded weakly. “Just–dizzy,” he said, his eyes fluttering. Keith’s stomach prickled with worry at how pale Lance’s face had gone, but he sort of secretly hoped that he might pass out–at least it would be a few minutes of unconsciousness.

Lance had no such luck, and continued to lean heavily on Keith all the way to the med bay.

“Lance, my boy,” Coran chirped, “I was just about to come find you!”

Keith’s eyes lit up. “You found a cure?” he asked hopefully, but Coran’s gaze told him to manage his expectations. 

“Well, I’ve found a treatment that will buy him a bit more time while I search for one,” he corrected. “I’ll warn you, however, it’s… well, it’s something similar to what you humans would call a vegetative state.”

Keith faltered. “You’re going to put him in a coma?”

“Not–technically,” Coran defended weakly. “He just cannot keep going as he is. The parasite is better able to wreak havoc the longer that Lance is awake.”

Lance nodded. “Keith, just let him do it already,” he huffed. “’I’m _tired_.” 

“You can’t just undergo a serious and dangerous medical procedure just because you’re tired,” Keith argued.

“But Keeeeeeith,” Lance whined, “I’m  _really tired_.”

He sighed. “I know you are,” he said with a weak smile. “Coran, are you positive that this is the best thing for him?”

Coran nodded, and Keith knew that he’d never do anything that would harm his boy. 

“Alright. Wake the others, then. So he can say goodnight.”

Lance smiled, and as soon as the announcement had been made, everyone rushed straight to his room, Hunk and Allura holding his hands while the others crowded around his bed anxiously.

“We’ll be here when you wake up,” Keith promised.

“Nigh nigh,” Lance slurred as the medicine took him under.


End file.
